Seventy-two league goals in 12 years is not a record to write home about. But a closer look at James Vaughan’s career shows that if you can get him on the field regularly, you will be rewarded with goals.

Vaughan has only hit double figures in three seasons as a professional footballer, and his only 20-goal campaign came in League One, with Bury last term.

If you just look at those figures, you would not be wanting to pin your goalscoring hopes on the 28-year-old’s shoulders, as it looks like Sunderland may be next season after buying the striker.

It would be a surprise were that still to be the case by August 4, but at present Vaughan is the only centre-forward on Sunderland’s books to have started a league match.

James Vaughan (Image: Daily Mirror)

But Vaughan’s talent has not been in question since his first game in 2005, when he broke the record as the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer by finding the net against Crystal Palace. Injuries stopped him fulfilling the potential he showed at Everton.

By the age of 21 Vaughan had dislocated his shoulder, severed an artery in his ankle and had surgery on both knees.

The man who gave him his Everton debut, David Moyes, said the problem was that Vaughan was too brave for his own good, throwing himself into places he ought not to be. Whether he is getting wiser or just luckier with age, Vaughan has tended to get onto the field more often in recent years.

Read More

He never scored for Norwich City or Birmingham City, but then he only made a total of six league starts combined for them, four in a row at the Blues. At Norwich he tore his meniscus and was out for four months. Within a fortnight he had picked up another knee injury, and another two months on the sidelines.

At Birmingham there were more opportunities, but twice as many from the bench as the start – a few minutes here, a few there, but not enough perhaps to get into the rhythm of playing.

James Vaughan career league goals

Had he scored in his early games he would have got more starts, of course, but when his full debut for Birmingham was a first start in half a year, you can understand why he may need a bit of time to scrape off the rust.

The five seasons where Vaughan has made double-figure league appearances have come in the last seven years. At worst his goals-per-game ratio is one in three (a fraction under in 2010-11), often more like one in two.